Another Wellesley alum who came out as being a guy after graduation, Warren Kunce '08, posted a video reacting to the recent news. I particularly liked his comments from 3:44-5:58 in the video, as follows:

"The admissions office at Wellesley has decided that that is either too confusing for a prospective student, or somehow the interview would be made all about me and my transition. Which is really insulting, by the way, that, like, I am an intelligent human being. I do know what the purpose of the interview is. I do know how to make an interview not be about myself. It's just this whole idea that the interview would be more about me than about the student is frankly, just absurd. It's insulting as well.... It first of all assumes that, one, that I would be comfortable talking about being trans and my transition, which, depending on the situation, I probably won't be. I mean, the whole thing can be taken care of in two sentences, like: "Hello, yes, I'm transgender, I transitioned to male after I was at Wellesley College, but this interview is about you, not about me, so let's go ahead. You know? This is not difficult. I'm not going to sit with a prospective student, a stranger who's 17 years old, who I don't know, and talk to them about, like, my gender identity and my transition. That's so inappropriate, so inappropriate. Why would I do that?

The only reason I can think of for us to spend any time at all talking about my gender identity is if the student was trans and wanted to know: as a trans person, how will it be at Wellesley? Will it be okay for me to transition at Wellesley? In which case I think I would be the perfect alum to be having this interview with the student. This whole policy, not letting trans alumni do the prospective interviews, also assumes that the prospective student is not transgender, which is not cool."

Warren, if you're reading this, thanks for saying this! Someone had to call out just how ridiculous the idea that someone who was trans would automatically make the interview about himself, and to me it was so absurd that I couldn't even address it head-on. It bounced right off my absurdity filter.

In other news, here's a story about the Smith student I mentioned who's being denied the role of hosting prospective students. As well, notes from a Bryn Mawr alum who's trying to get them to state a clear policy on trans women as applicants, featuring this bureaucratic gem from their admissions office: "If it is not clear that an applicant to the College is female, we would approach the situation on an individual basis to gain a better understanding of the student's circumstances." (I assume this means panty-checks?)

Well, I'm on the front page of the Wellesley News this week -- here's the article (PDF). This is an ephemeral URL that will go away once the Wellesley News updates their site, so save a copy if you want to have one.

I thought that Lesley Thulin did a great job with the article. None of the Admissions Office staff were willing to comment on-the-record, but there was a fascinating comment from an anonymous Admissions Office staffer who said (column 4, page 2), among other things, that the admissions office had a climate of discouraging any mention of Wellesley's LGBTQ community to prospective students and their families.

To the extent that that anonymous source's perception is accurate, it's unfortunate that the administration doesn't align itself with Wellesley's student and faculty population in showing pride for the LGBTQ community at Wellesley, rather than distancing itself from it. And amusingly, by doing their best to try to make me shut up and go away, the admissions office has attracted way more negative publicity than they would have done by just letting me do an interview.

I love my alma mater, but the decisions made by the admissions office are cowardly.

If you would like to add your name to the petition being organized by current students, you can see the text of it at http://docs.com/BO71 and email Sarah Ditmars -- sditmars (domain name is what you'd expect) to add yourself. You should include your affiliation with the college (presumably for most people who haven't already signed on, that'll be "Class of [whatever]"). I didn't write the petition and if I had, I would have asked for something less strong (to wit, a statement of discrimination, with reasons why, or of non-discrimination), but I do support what it says.

A bit far afield from the subject of the previous post, but here are some more reasons why you might want to think about teaching yourself to talk about cis people and trans people rather than people who are biologically some gender or the other:

• Because of the popular belief that trans women aren't "biologically female", many US states will deny such a person the right to correct her birth certificate to reflect her gender. (Same for trans men.) While cis people always have the right to have government-issued documentation that reflects their social gender, trans people are frequently denied that right. The justification for this inequality is that government-issued documentation reflects one's "biological gender". Being denied the right to carry documentation that doesn't reflect the gender one socially presents as -- again, a right that cis people never have to think twice about -- renders one vulnerable to rape and other physical assault.
  
  
• Because of the popular belief that trans men aren't "biologically male", a trans man's health insurance company can deny him medically necessary care for no reason other than the concept that such care is intended to change one's sex or gender. (Same for trans women.) Even though the American Medical Association's stance is that treatment that brings one's physical characteristics into line with one's biological (neurological) sex is medically necessary, the non-evidence-based notion that transitioning is a matter of "changing sex" or "changing gender" provides a political foundation for the systematic denial of health care to some people. For many trans people, said health care is a matter of life and death; one recent study showed that 41% of trans people attempt suicide at some point in their life.
  
  
• The notion that it's possible to "discover" that a trans woman is "biologically male" is the foundation for the trans-panic defense, which means that a cis man can murder a trans woman with no legal consequences if he has sex with her while fully aware of her trans status and later regrets it. Similar reasoning is used to legally deny trans people such luxuries as the right to use a public bathroom.
  

So usage of terms like "biologically male" and "biologically female" is not harmless imprecision, and calling it out is not mere PC policing. Language is the primary tool used to reinforce the culture of oppression of those who can't or won't live with their arbitrarily assigned gender, so the language you choose to use affects whether you participate in reinforcing a certain culture of violence, or in actively resisting it. Of course, the consequences of that oppression are all too real.

A little bit of background for the one or two of you who don't know: In 2001 I graduated from Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, which thinks of itself as a women's college but -- since I graduated from it, and not just me -- is really more of a historically women's college.

Wellesley's alumnae [sic] association coordinates alum volunteers in various cities to interview prospective students. The interview is partially used for evaluating an applicant, but mostly, as I understand it, a chance for a prospective student to learn more about the college from someone who attended. I volunteered to interview a student in the past, when I lived in Berkeley, and I enjoyed it. So when I got an email last fall that the Oregon alumnae club was looking for alums to interview students in Portland, I inquired.

The difference between the last time I interviewed, and now, is that in between, I came out as being a man. I was always male, of course, it's just that because it's so rare when you're outside specifically queer/trans spaces to hear that encephalic sex can differ from the sex that people impute to one based on one's actual or presumed genitalia, I didn't know that I wasn't female until I was 18 and didn't know that I was male until I was 26. In fact, it was in a class at Wellesley (Anthropology 269 - Gender, Marriage and the Family with Prof. Lauren Leve) that I first learned that there were people in the world who'd been assigned female at birth, but weren't female. In any case, I didn't think this particular difference had any more effect on whether I could represent my alma mater to a prospective student than, say, the fact that I have longer hair now than I did when I graduated, but it turned out there were some people in the college administration who begged to differ.

I met with the alum volunteer who was coordinating interviewers, K., to discuss what would be involved. I had told K. by email that I was a trans man, so that she wouldn't be surprised when we met in person. When we met, K. explained that she had talked to someone in the alumnaeadmissions office, and they had decided that trans alums would not be allowed to do one-on-one interviews with prospective students. I had the impression that this was a "policy" that had been formulated on the spot. K. said that I would be welcome to participate in any other recruiting activity, but not do a one-on-one interview.

I wasn't terribly surprised by this, but I was disappointed. While I was pondering how to go forward, I received a call from Maggie Farnsworth, the associate director of admissions at Wellesley. She said that there had been a miscommunication, there was no policy against trans alums being involved with recruiting in any way, and that I could go ahead and be involved. After our brief exchange, I didn't actually get around to contacting K. again, because I was getting busier with grad school. This was back in November 2010.

Just before I left for the winter holiday break, I got another call from Joy St. John, the director of admissions. I waited until after returning from a bike trip to return her call, and spoke with her in January. She restated the original policy decision and rationale that K. had given to me, saying that if I were to interview a prospective, the focus of the interview would be on me, and they wanted interviews to be about the prospective student. She said that a prospective student wouldn't be expecting to interview with a man. I asked how she would feel about that if I was a person of color -- many high school students from Eastern Oregon might never have interacted with someone who wasn't white, and even among alums, some ethnic groups are certainly not well-represented compared to their numbers in the population. Or, what if I was a person with an obvious physical disability? This might also be surprising to some prospective students. Her reply was that the admissions office explains to prospectives that Wellesley has students of color, and disabled students, but not that Wellesley has male students. Thus, while she cited the need to protect prospective students (from, apparently, the knowledge either that trans men exist or that Wellesley graduates men), the real concern is protecting Wellesley's administration from having to acknowledge the existence of trans students and alums.

Again, it wasn't surprising to me that Wellesley was happy to throw its trans alums under the bus in order to desperately conceal from prospectives the existence of men living in Wellesley dorms and male Wellesley alums, but it is disappointing. It is certainly true that the Wellesley administration needs to decide how to handle the truth that the existence of trans people obliterates the idea of a single-sex educational institution (the only way to maintain the "single-sex"-edness of one's institution is to immediately expel students who come out as trans after enrolling, and I'm not sure anyone would find that morally tenable), but that decision is not for me to make, and the burden of determining just what it is that Wellesley has to offer prospective students aside from the absence of male students is not on my shoulders. In my opinion, respect for alums -- all alums -- has to come first, and being told, implicitly, that I'm not a suitable representative of my alma mater and that my college is ashamed to have me as an alum is certainly not respect.

It seems counterproductive to me to "protect" a prospective student from knowledge about trans students. If a prospective is accepted to Wellesley and decides to attend, then within just a few short months, she might be attending classes with male students, living with them, sharing bathrooms with them. I don't know how many out trans men are attending Wellesley right now, but it seems unlikely that the number will ever be zero from here on, barring any administrative crackdowns. Moreover, prospective students may be queer, may have trans parents, family members, or friends, or may be trans men themselves. Talking with Ms. St. John gave me the distinct impression that such students aren't who Wellesley wishes to recruit.

I asked Ms. St. John if the admissions office would be willing to state the policy on trans alums' involvement with recruiting in writing. It would be difficult for me to bring others into the discussion based on hearsay; a policy that isn't written down is not one that an institution can be held accountable for. I received no written reply for several months; at that point, I learned that Wellesley had recently hired an advisor to LGBT students, and contacted her about the matter. About a week later, I received the following email from Ms. St. John, which I must include below for the sake of holding power accountable.

Dear Tim,

I recently had a conversation with Dr. Fygetakis, Director of LGBTQ Services, regarding our office decision to ask you not to interview prospective students. In our conversation, Dr. Fygetakis indicated that you believed I had not responded to your request for a written policy regarding male interviewers. I want to clarify any confusion. In our original conversation I stated that I felt it was unlikely that I would be able to provide you with a written policy, because our decision to ask you not to interview was not a college or office policy, but rather, one of the many case-by-case decisions our office makes regarding volunteer interviewers. I then told you I would respond to your request for a written policy. A week later (after consulting with other administrators in my office and in other offices on c ampus), I did leave you a voicemai l message explaining that I would not be able to provide you with the written policy you requested. I apologize if you did not receive that communication. I am writing you an email in hopes that this is a more reliable form of communication. Our office will not be providing you with the written policy you request, for the reasons I stated above. However, I do want to be clear that the College would welcome your involvement in other volunteer activities. I am happy to remain in communication with you regarding this issue. My phone number and contact information are listed below and you should feel free to contact me again if you think it would be helpful.

Sincerly,
Joy St. John

One of the most common verbal assaults against trans people is that we "just want attention". Apparently, if one is trans, one is expected to be above the normal human need for interaction with and validation from others. I've been hesitating for six months to discuss this matter in a public forum, because I believed that I should go through the proper channels first; well, in my opinion, the quoted email demonstrates to me that I have done everything it's possible to do within the proper channels. I also hesitated because of the threat, already levelled at me, that if I contested this decision, I would be accused of wanting to make everything about me, of wanting attention. Well, I don't; I certainly couldn't care less about whether I, or someone else, is asked to do a particular volunteer job. I do care whether I'm treated the same way as everyone else, or treated differently based on my gender or on my assigned sex or the juxtaposition of the two. In her email, Ms. St. John said that discrimination against trans alums was a "case-by-case decision". It's hard to read this statement with an assumption of good faith, because she and others made it very clear to me that I was not being excluded from recruiting because of any personal, individual qualities, but solely because of my gender. It's impossible that it could be any other way, as the decision to exclude me based on my gender was made before anyone involved with the admissions office had met or talked to me. If I was being excluded not to interview because someone in Admissions believed I would not be a good representative of the college, or wouldn't be cordial to a prospective student, then the subject of my gender would never have come up in conversation. Furthermore, since Wellesley considered me a good representative of the college when I interviewed a prospective student in the past, and since the only thing that has changed since then is that I'm no longer pretending to be a woman, I would have to come to the conclusion that no "case-by-case decision" was made, but rather, a discriminatory decision was and is being made.

Since institutional discrimination is rarely confined to one person or one situation, in the end, I think it's worthwhile for me to raise the issue in public. I hesitated as well because I could be accused of complaining about "First World problems". Surely no one privileged enough to have graduated from a college like Wellesley has anything to complain about? I think not, though; incidents like this one are examples of microaggressions: tiny interactions that accumulate on each other to maintain social structures of domination. If the existence of worse problems in the world was an excuse, I could get out of a speeding ticket by saying that at least I'm not engaging in child sex trafficking. I think that whenever you tell somebody that they are less of a person, that that makes the world a worse place.

I don't think that my alma mater has anything to be ashamed of in having me as an alum. I'm working for a nonprofit right now; I'm planning to finish my Ph.D and become a teacher. I volunteer, I ride my bike instead of driving, and I've helped friends get through tough times. I'm certainly not the most noble or the most high-achieving person in my graduating class, but at least I don't work on Wall Street. Even though most graduates of my alma mater are women and I'm a man, I am exactly as good a representative of Wellesley as other alum is. Every individual is different, with their own set of experiences; no one is more typical than another. And it's not going to do Wellesley any good in the long term to either purge trans students or work to erase those students' gender identities. Wellesley will always have male students, since gender-variant people who were raised as female will always search for liberation from the roles that were forced on them, and flock institutions that seem to have strong feminist values. The question for the administration, then, is that given that male students will always be with them, whether there's a good reason to distinguish between a man with an 'M' written on his birth certificate and one with an 'F' there. That question isn't for me to answer. All I know is that they can't have it both ways; if they don't consider me good enough to represent the college, then surely my money isn't good enough to support the college, either. Which would seem to contradict the contents of my mailbox every few weeks.

Being told my alma mater wishes to deny the fact of my existence is a small injustice, but as with any microaggression, it grates nonetheless. Everybody only gets (at most) one undergraduate alma mater, and while most people never have to think twice about being able to say, proudly, that they graduated from the University of _______, I do have to think twice about whether I can be proud to have graduated from a school where, it seems, the administration would be more comfortable if I was still pretending to be something I'm not.

The outcomes I'd like to see are either that Wellesley issue an official, written statement of the specific ways in which it does not treat its alums and students who are trans men or who are genderqueer in the same way it treats its alums and students who are cis women, which can then be discussed or critiqued; or, alternatively, that they issue a statement that it is college policy that there is no discrimination on the basis of gender within the context of alum activities. If you are a Wellesley student or alum who agrees with me, I would encourage you to write to the office of admissions to let them know how their decisions to try to erase trans alums will affect your willingness to donate to the College. And let me know as well, so that we can think about what collective action is possible.

Finally, it appears that Wellesley isn't the only putative women's college that's having a problem balancing its image with respect for trans students and alums: a trans male student at Smith was denied the opportunity to be a host to a visiting prospective student and is circulating a petition about it.

Edit: It seems that I made an error in the original post by mentioning the alumnae office. As far as I know, nobody from the alumnae office was involved in policy discussions about trans alums' involvement with recruiting. It is solely an admissions office matter. If you're a Wellesley person, direct any thoughts to the admissions office only.

This Saturday April 9, I'm officially (if belatedly) celebrating my temporary return to the Bay Area with dinner at Ti Couz in the Mission at 5:30 PM, then going to Writers With Drinks at 6:30 PM (show starts at 7:30, but it's advised to get there as early as possible). I've already emailed people who are likely to attend (and some who aren't), but, please join me! Even if you're an Internet person I've never met. Especially if you're an Internet person I've ever met. Possible outing to Humphry Slocombe afterwards.

(Ti Couz may be closed, in which case we'll be at Pakwan -- 16th and Guerrero -- instead. This may be the royal 'we'.)

While walking down the street today to get lunch with my four co-workers from my job that I found out about on LiveJournal, two of whom I originally know from LiveJournal, we ran into a friend of mine who I originally met on LiveJournal who, it turns out, my boss also knows. (Not from LiveJournal.)

Modern communication technology destroys community and makes us anti-social, though.

I'm giving away the following T-shirts. As with everything else, you don't need to pay me anything for postage but you can donate to my favorite charity if you want, or else, pay it forward.

If you want something, comment with (1) which ones you want; (2) your address. (Comments screened.)

1. "RTFM", white on black, from ThinkGeek. Size L. I outgrew this one (and I don't mean it's too small). taken by jholomorphic

2. Boston anagrams T map, like this but not organic cotton. I found that as with many CafePress shirts, the letters aren't clear enough to read from a distance. White, size L. Gone

3. "My Other Computer Is a Linux System", fuschia letters on white, "Linux Journal" in small letters below. Size L. A little faded, but that adds to the charm. Gone

4. Escher's "Drawing Hands", no words, black on white. Size L. Gone

5. Wellesley shirt, just says "Wellesley" in big blue letters and sort of a flowery shield design (not the actual college seal). Gray, size L. Probably only of interest if you went to Wellesley, and possibly not even then. Gone

6. Avenue Q "It Sucks To Be Me" shirt, white lettering on black. Size L. I only wore this a few times, then got tired of people asking me why it sucks to be me in a concerned tone of voice. taken by jholomorphic

7. "Gender Fucked", purple lettering on blue sleeveless shirt, size M (the American Apparel "Classic Girl" style, so it runs small), from Mushycat. taken by thisone

8. On the front: "program n. a logical sequence of operations to be performed by a computer that usually results in error message. v.t. to engage in an activity similar to banging one's head against a wall." On the back: "Cuervo Tradicional, The Legendary Tequila". No, I don't know what to tell you either. Yellowish-orangish, size XL. (I would be wearing this if it wasn't too big for me.) Tentatively gone

9. "Project Steve" shirt from the National Center for Science Education -- except this is an older version of the shirt, because it's dark blue and only has 600 scientists named Steve. Same concept, though. Size L. Gone

10. Black spaghetti-strap tank top with white "Cambridge" design with a drawing of bikes locked to a fence. The label says "One Size", but that is a lie. I've only worn this once or twice, because it was always too small. I'm guessing it should really be a M or even perhaps S. It is from the Cambridge in the UK, but you could pretend it's from the other Cambridge if you like. Gone

11. "Haskell Hackers: We're not afraid of a little unsafePerformIO" shirt, CafePress, size L, black. I was the official test marketing focus panel for this shirt. But I don't really do that much Haskell for its own sake anymore, so it should go to someone who can get behind the message. taken by rjmccall

12. "Science Rules" shirt, blue on white. The image there isn't very good, but it says "Science Rules!" in big letters overlaid over various scientific laws in small type. Size L. Gone

13. "I ♥ Nerds", black letters (with a white heart) on green, babydoll-style, size L. Gone

14. They Might Be Giants ringer shirt (black with white collar and cuffs), with all the TMBG song titles (at the time) arranged in the shape of a T-shirt on the front, and "Dial-a-Song" on the back. The design is pretty small. Size L (I think), but doesn't fit me. taken by jholomorphic

That's all for now!

In a post titled "Capitalism Plus Gender: The Inadequacy Equation", Matt Kailey wrote about the binary gender system as a fundamental lynchpin of capitalism: if you want people to buy stuff, it has to be stuff they don't need (you can't get rich if you limit yourself to selling people stuff they need), and one great way to make people feel they need stuff they don't actually need is to make them feel inadequate. One way to do that is to set up an unattainable ideal of gendered standards for men and for women, and create an atmosphere of shame around failing to meet the "right" standard for your assigned-at-birth sex. It's a great way to sell stuff, whether it's makeup or truck nuts.

I agree, but I don't think he goes far enough. Gender is just one example of how low self-esteem and weak self-images are a resource to be exploited. One reason why the concept of self-esteem -- of teaching people that they have innate worth that isn't determined by their achievements, their personal wealth, their physical appearance, or how somebody else assesses them -- is such a radical one, such a dangerous one is that it's a threat to capitalism. People who love and accept themselves are less easily manipulated into channeling their self-hatred outwards into a vote for a radical right-wing politician who promises to make terrorists or child molesters or illegal immigrants die for your sins, or channeling their existential angst into credit card debt. It's better for the economy and the political power structure (not that those are different) if people don't have the inner resources to accept themselves without hating other people or spending money.

(If this is making you want to say, "But there isn't some big conspiracy out there to make people feel bad!", then you might want to think about whether you're willing to learn to extend the same skills you've learned about analyzing broader structures and patterns in math, logic, computer science, biology, or some other such field to analyze patterns that arise in societies and human behaviors (with no need for centralized, "conspiracy"-style planning) as well.)

I thought about the same idea while reading "Weight Science: Evaluating the Evidence for a Paradigm Shift" by Linda Bacon and Lucy Aphramor, a literature review of studies on the efficacy of weight loss in health outcomes that appeared in Nutrition Journal last month. Bacon and Aphramor use evidence to argue persuasively that contrary to an overwhelming body of conventional wisdom in US culture, there is actually no reason to believe that losing weight, if pursued as a goal for its own sake, will improve your health if you are overweight. The weight loss industry -- and, unfortunately, the medical professionals who serve as an arm of it -- relies on using shame and guilt to keep people dependent on "solutions" that will never solve either their real problems or their imagined problems. But shame and guilt don't cause fat people to lose weight *or* to get healthier -- in fact, shame and guilt make people *less* healthy, in concrete physical ways. We often hear that the "fat acceptance movement" is a bad idea because it's bad to "send a message" that it's okay to be fat. But that's a perspective that arises from a combination of self-hatred, fear, and anxiety: shaming people for being fat doesn't help them stop being fat and doesn't help them live longer or happier lives. In any case, the idea that being fat causes poor health outcomes is much more based on confusion between conformity to artificial (marketing-driven) beauty ideals and health than it is on data or evidence.

But the beauty ideals are important, because they keep the wheels of capitalism spinning. Shame and guilt are a profitable natural resource, and unlike many natural resources, they are infinitely renewable.

Keep hating yourselves, kids -- it keeps the economy strong!

Want to work with some of the nicest, smartest people you'll ever meet? Also with me? HASP (High Assurance Systems Programming), my group at Portland State, has two postdoc positions available, and if you're a recently graduated (or soon-to-graduate) Ph.D in the areas of programming languages and/or operating systems, you may want to apply.

http://hasp.cs.pdx.edu/postdoc.html